Three Blind Mice see how they run

So last week I mentioned in my blog that on my week off I had spent some of my evenings trying to catch the mice, that for some reason had decided to habitat in our flat which is situated on the first floor  (so you wouldn’t necessarily expect to find them). We have our suspicions that these furry rodents came as a leaving present from our next door neighbour when he was evicted, and the grime fighters who were sent in to clear his flat out had disturbed the family of mice, so they choose my lovely little flat to make a new home.

It all started one Tuesday night when I was sitting quite happily watching TV when I said to my partner I can hear something odd by the side of me, he told me not to be so stupid and to carry on watching the programme. I continued to hear the noise so in the end, Nick pulled the sofa out and thats when we found a muffin wrapper that had been scratched at and little crumbs of chocolate behind the sofa. After seeing the look of terror on my face Nick chose to play down about us having a mouse and said maybe the wrapped had got caught in the wheels of the sofa. I didn’t buy this explanation but went along with it. The next evening we were watching Coronation Street when again I heard something but this time was in the cupboard under the sink where the bin is kept and all the empty carrier bags (that everyone seems to collect and keep). After Nick trying to make out I was hearing things, he decided to give in and opened the cupboard door, he bashed the side of the bin and out came a big brown mouse, and he ran down the side of the washing machine. Both of us let out a yell and started to freak out a bit. We called the dad’s who came to the rescue with traps (humane and the snap shut traps) as well as some rat killer. The traps were set for the evening and I was given the assurance the mouse would be caught by the morning.

At 5.30am I got up to make myself a drink when I heard rustling in the bin again, so woke up Nick who went down to the communal bins and chucked the bin bag away.  By now I was started to freak out a bit and couldn’t go back to sleep, the mouse hadn’t been caught but looks like he had been injured by the snap shut trap. We didn’t hear anything in the evening however when we went to the cupboard on Friday am (the morning we went to Harry Potter) there was one in the black humane trap. Nick went downstairs and released him back into the wild and off to terrorize somebody else – now I am sorry to say this mouse did not have a happy ending…. the cat who roams outside our building suddenly appeared and pounced on him and ate him.

So we thought this would be the end of our problems and peace, calm and being able to sleep would be restored, this was not to be as at 1am on Saturday morning whilst making a drink – there was a rustling in the bin. Nick (bless him) got up and chucked the bin bag into the communal bin. The mouse kept coming back for the next 3 days quite happily eating my dairy milk we had left out to try to catch him, but he was a sneaky little mouse and seemed to be able to avoid capture until Tuesday night.

At 10:30pm on the Tuesday I told Nick I could hear something who just looked at me, sighed and went to the cupboard, he opened the door and running round was a baby mouse. Nick went to grab him by the tail but it came off in his hands, we then tried cornering him in the cupboard with the bin and the traps but somehow he managed to escape and was then running round our living room. He hid behind the sofa, then under the TV stand, the chest before finally getting caught behind the book shelf which he only had one way in and one way out option. We scared him out into a waiting ice cream container. Nick then walked about 10 mins down the road and let him out into the wild. Came back and started to rearrange the traps when he then discovered there was one in there, so back out he want and again released him into the wild. Touch wood we haven’t seen/heard or had any more furry rodents and that was the last of them.

We reported this to our landlord who told us to try to catch them but nothing else was done. Should the landlord have done more to help us? My mum’s next door neighbour who has 22 cats – that is not a typing error and is definitely 22 cats did offer the use of one of her cats. Does anyone have any tips or advice just in case we should get them back?